"Titans: Legacies"

Featuring:
"Guyver: Dark Hero"

in

"Land of Confusion"

Arc One: "Darker Legacies"

Chapter One: "Celebrations and Omens"

Disclaimer: I do not own these characters, nor am I making a profit off of this. The characters belong to their respective copyright and trademark holders (Warner Brothers, DC Comics, LA Hero, New Line Cinema, Yoshiki Takaya, and Viz Media, amongst others), as well as some belonging to a good friend of mine, Rider Paladin, and some of my own to boot.

Author's Note: This happens after Legacies' first arc, but before the second.

It was a pleasant enough affair, all things considered. A gala party and dance, in honor of Oliver Queen, the former Green Arrow, thrown by the current Batman, Dick Grayson (though not everyone present knew that last tidbit), and was attended by the current roster of Titans, their parents, and their friends. It was nice, and bright, and everyone was chatting with everyone else.

Damian hated every minute of it.

He hadn't seen Mar'i yet, and he couldn't believe he had let himself be talked into this. While he respected Queen as the hero he had been, in some ways, he also detested get-togethers like this where everyone was nice and happy and polite and chatty. It reminded him of the Marion Grange Preparatory School, and the annoyingly chatty friends Mar'i had. If she had been here, he would've tolerated the boring (to him) speeches and congratulations, and everything else. That was when a hand tapped him on the shoulder.

"You don't look like you're having fun, Mister Wayne…" Came a familiar voice, prompting the young man to turn around, coming face to face with a smiling Mar'i Grayson, who was wearing a specially-tailored black dress and matching shoes, leaning to one side as she regarded the loner with an amused look on her face.

"Not particularly, no. I can think of several other places I'd rather be than here," He responded, somewhat curtly, crossing his arms over his chest as he went back to watching the guest of honor.

"You seem especially sour today."

Olivia Queen was talking with her mother, smiling, when an attractive woman wearing a green dress, heels, and gloves, with bright green hair, walked up, accompanied by a young-appearing Caucasian man with short dark, somewhat wavy hair, wearing a formal tuxedo, his dark eyes bearing a troubled look that quickly hid itself when he noticed Olivia staring into them. Dinah turned, smiling at the green haired woman.

"Fire! It's been forever. How are you?" The two hugged, laughing a bit, while the young man looked slightly uncomfortable, and sighed, turning around and crossing his arms over his chest, trying to do his best not to intrude on the moment.

"I've been good."

"Checkmate been keeping you busy?"

"You could say that." Beatriz DaCosta laughed, an amused look on her face. "The workload ust keeps piling up."

"Say…who's your friend? The one who's trying to avoid looking this way?" Dinah asked, laughing a bit as the man grumbled softly under his breath.

"This is Sean. Sean Barker. He's my partner…well, my new partner. Has been for the past four missions I've been on. He's a real life-saver."

"Really? Well, it's a pleasure to meet you, Sean. Any friend of Fire's is a friend of ours." Dinah extended a hand to the man, who responded by turning around and accepting the hand, giving it a shake.

"Thank you, ma'am." He replied a bit stiffly, looking around curiously. "There sure are a lot of people here…"

"Yes, Ollie's pretty popular amongst the superhero crowd, and the environmentalists; he's done a lot for a lot of people, and this is how they're paying him back."

"You both must be very proud of him." Sean nodded a bit, and rubbed the back of his neck for a moment.

"You should meet him, Sean." Fire said, chuckling as she shook her head at the seemingly-younger man's nervousness.

"He's a hero, B. I'm not. I'm just a grunt who was forced into this life a long time ago."

Olivia blinked at that, then raised a hand to her head, feeling faint for some reason. At the same time, an odd look came over Sean's face, as though he had just suddenly gotten a headache, at the same time Olivia's knees began to buckle. With a groan, she fell back to the ground with a thud.

"Olivia?! Olivia!" her mother cried out, eyes going wide, her father rushing over as the two went to check on her. Their daughter's face was contorted in an expression of what could only be described as fear.

She was in a chamber of some kind, arms and legs held out by thing strands of what looked like flesh, blood dripping from her nearly-naked frame. As she cried out, a sudden beeping could be heard, and a whirring, and then portions of armor began to slap onto her, clamping onto her body, prompting her to scream louder as she struggled to free herself, to draw on her techno-organic mesh, only to find that there was no response. Then, as she moved her head about, trying to see where she was, a panicked look on her face, the right half of a full-head helmet struck her, clamping onto her face – the helmet and armor were blue, strands attached to them as well, the helmet sporting what looked like a cross between a horn and a fin, with a glowing reddish-white eye lens. She began screaming again, struggling to get free…

…And with a panicked scream of "NO!" she awoke, bolting upright, and instinctively into the arms of her mother, her body trembling and breaking out in a cold sweat, shivering as she clutched onto Dinah, panting and gasping.

"Honey, what's the matter?" Dinah said in a soothing voice, stroking her daughter's hair lightly, which helped to calm down the teenager. Mar'i and Damian were nearby, though Damian looked up for a moment, a suspicious look on his face as he eyed the departing Sean, who was slipping out of the room. After a few moments, Damian followed after him, but as he entered the hall, he saw, out of the corner of his eye, a flash of bright light, then the sound of something moving at incredible speed, proving to the young man that there was something suspicious about the other…

Hours later, after Olivia had been checked over for the last of several times - protesting all the while (once the shock had worn off), though staying relatively still as she was examined by Doctor Mid-Nite yet again, trying to find the cause of her fainting spell – everyone had gone home for the night. Well, most of them. Mar'i went on patrol as Nightstar over Gotham City. Aside from the earlier, aforementioned excitement, the night had been pretty quiet…but that was usually when things got their worst, it seemed. And indeed, something was about to disrupt her peaceful flight over the city…

As she passed by the Wayne Industries building, turning a bit so she could peer at the bright lights closely, she could hear the tell-tale sound of exhaust, and the sound of something moving through the air at high speeds....

She quickly flew up, and turned around, and as she did, a miniature rocket flew past her, continuing on its way towards the Wayne building, until Nightstar hit it with a starbolt, causing it to explode prematurely. She then heard the sound of boot-jets as something neared her, and tilted her head, spotting the source and frowning.

It was a familiar design of power armor – familiar to any metahuman, at least. It was the same kind of armor that was once used by Lex Luthor in the occasions he went to battle for himself, rather than through his many proxies and minions, and hired goons. This armor was of the same design, complete with the purple and green color scheme, and kryptonite knuckles, which Mar'i could identify by the casings over said knuckles. The difference was this armor sported a helmet with a seemingly blank purple faceplate mounted on the main part of the helmet, which was the same green as the rest of the armor.

The purple gauntlets lifted up, an energy discharge beginning to build up around them, as the modulated voice of the armor's user came out from the helmet's speakers, though Nightstar could still hear the smug tone of the wannabe supervillain inside. "You've got one chance to get out of this alive, girl. You can surrender, and come with me, or we can fight, and you can die."

"You don't scare me…especially considering you're wearing someone else's clothes, so to speak." The hybrid replied, before firing a starbolt at her would-be assailant, which struck him dead on. The armor – and the person inside – was knocked back several feet, but after that, the armor's automatic guidance systems righted itself, and the person inside fired another energy blast, which Nightstar blocked, only to find the right gauntlet in her face, striking her hard and knocking her back, dizzying her slightly, that fist followed by the other striking her in the stomach, causing her to double over, followed by a double handed overhead axe chop, which sent her spiraling down towards the roof of the Wayne building, crashing into it with a deafening impact, smashing through the neon sign on the roof and skidding to a halt almost at the other edge. She coughed, and spat up some blood, groaning a bit. "Ugh…maybe I spoke too soon…" She said, wiping her mouth with the back of her right hand.

Meanwhile, her attacker was charging up an energy burst from the chest-mounted beam weapon the armor sported, specially modified to blast Kryptonite to deal with Superman, but in this case, the sheer power of the beam was enough to hurt anyone severely…and induce symptoms of radiation sickness to boot. However, the armor's HUD began blinking rapidly, and a warning alarm sounded. "What…? An energy build-up…but where?" Then the answer came, and he rolled to the side, just as a massive beam of energy blasted by him, causing the external layer of the armor to heat up considerably, and even warp a little, damaging the chest weapon's internal mechanisms and deactivating them until they could be repaired. "The hell was that?!" the man – or woman – inside barked, aiming their gauntlet mounted weapons in the direction of the blast, only to be struck by a blue blur that rammed into the large armor, and then unseen arms locked around the person's body, yanking them down in a twisting, rolling, barreling fall that caused them to smash through the side of the Wayne building, coming to rest in an area full of offices, landing in the break room. When the armored villain looked up, they saw the blur, and the source of the energy – it was a humanoid, seemingly male, in blue armor that didn't look like metal, or anyting else known to man, that consisted of plating on the legs, arms, chest, abdomen, shoulders, feet, hands, and a blue helmet with a horn/fin rising up from the top of the head, with a small greenish orb mounted over a larger, metal one with a ring of light around the base, a similar (though ring-less) orb mounted in the stomach/waist area. Where there wasn't armor, there was a black-tinted undersheath that seemed to be made of some kind of organic 'wires'/coils. Two points came off the armored elbows, a pair of glowing, segmented eyelenses watching Nightstar's attacker closely, two small orbs mounted over the mouth area, with what looked like two steam exhaust vents at the sides, another two medium sized spheres mounted on both sides of the head, set in a track. When the gauntlets came up, the sphere on the right moved, and the blue figure rolled to the side, dodging a blast of Kryptonite.

"Is that the best you can do?" Came a distorted, echoing voice, one that sent a chill down the other armored person's spine, at how inhuman it sounded…and it certainly didn't sound like anything a machine could make. Regardless, the other attacked, firing again, this time the blast being answered with a energy burst from the green orb (a focusing lens) that struck the left gauntlet's palm, where the energy weapon was mounted, causing it to explode, sending pieces of kryptonite flying as a gloved hand was exposed (that was due to the undersheath still doing its job of protecting the person in the armor, who nonetheless felt the pain of the gauntlet overheating and exploding, gripping their hand tightly.

"You bastard!" they said in their own distorted voice. The other gauntlet lashed out, only to be caught by the black-palmed left hand of the other, who twisted the arm back, and lashed out with an upwards kick, knocking the helmet off the armor, and revealing a young woman (in her late teens, at most) with short red and black hair, a shocked look on her face as the crumpled helmet fell to the ground. "H-hey, maybe we can talk about this…"

"There's nothing to talk about. Your kind only listens to one thing: violence. Well, I'm sending my message here and now, loud and clear…" The blue armored male pulled his right arm back, the point at his elbow suddenly extending into a curved blade, which, after a spinning lunge, found itself buried in the young woman's stomach, the girl spitting up blood as she fell back, a blank look on her face, the blade having gone all the way through the armor, like a hot knife through butter, easily cleaving what would take great effort on the part of most metahumans to even scratch. The blade was dripping blood as the man stood there, twin bursts of steam blasting from the mouth vents, when the orb on the left side of his head swiveled – it was Nightstar, having just recovered and seeing the damage done to the exterior of the building. As she entered the hole, she caught sight of the blue figure, who promptly turned and ran, going to the other side of the building, and leaping through the window, spinning as he fell through the air, crashing to a stop on the roof of a car, nearly demolishing it, then running into an alley and vanishing. Nightstar would have followed, but her attacker was in rough shape, bleeding to death through her stomach wound. The hybrid picked up the girl, and carried her as gently as she could, and as fast as she could, to the nearest hospital, wondering what it was exactly that had saved her life so coldly.

End Notes: And so ends the first chapter of this latest endeavor of mine. For those that are curious, yes, I do leave a lot of things unfinished, an unsettling trend I'll admit, but something I'm currently working on now. All my older fanfics will be finished as well as the new ones.

Also, for anyone who's wondering what's going on, Sean Barker is a character from the US live-action adaptation of Yoshiki Takaya's Bio-Booster Armor Guyver manga and anime series, brought to us by Steve Wang (the man responsible for the upcoming Kamen Rider: Dragon Knight television series), though obviously changes were made in the process of adapting. The first movie isn't worth much notice for this story, as later elements used in the first (such as humor and goofy sound effects) were removed in the second, DTV entry in the series, which was much more serious in tone, and used more elements of the original series' canon.

Retroactive End Note: I've decided to rework this fanfic by making it into a larger story, necessitating changing the title and making this the first story arc in an overall larger piece, as well as this end note. Hopefully I won't need to do this anymore in the future, but if it happens, it happens.